What You Should Know About “Free” Text Messaging Services An educational description of text messaging services including the positives and negatives about true SMS messaging as compared to free services that use either email-to-text (SMTP) or are ad-supported. Prepared by: TextPower, Inc. 27134-A Paseo Espada Suite 324 San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675 818.222.8600 www.TextPower.com [email protected] WHAT IS “FREE” TEXT MESSAGING? The idea of sending text messages at no charge can be appealing to companies that want to avoid even the nominal costs – typically pennies per message – of sending messages via the FCC-approved Short Message Service (SMS) channels and using the carriers’ proscribed SMS protocols. While it is possible to send messages to a cell phone that appear as a text message by using an “email-to-text” function there are some significant disadvantages – and more than a few legal issues – in doing so. Companies that are sending text messages to wireless devices using the email- to-text function instead of the SMS protocols should consider all of the pros and cons of doing so. The intent of this paper is to clarify the benefits and ramifications of each method. How can text messages be sent for free? There are two ways that text messages can be sent at no charge to the sender (standard message and data rates will apply for the mobile user who receives the message regardless of whether it is free to the sender): 1. The messages are ad-supported. A certain number of characters from the available 160 total characters in the text message are dedicated to an advertisement. Typically the sender of the message has no control over the content or nature of the ad as it is inserted by the aggregator (a company similar to TextPower). This is typically used by companies that wish to send millions of marketing messages per month and whose cost concerns outweigh potential downsides of irrelevant, competitive or inappropriate content in the ads attached to the messages. 2. Instead of using FCC-sanctioned and carrier-approved SMS protocols, gateways and “short codes” senders may choose to use email-to-text capabilities. This email-to-text process, otherwise known as “SMTP messaging” (SMTP is an Internet Service Provider acronym for “Simple Mail Transfer Protocol”) is the same process by which email is traditionally sent to or from a computer using an email application like Outlook or an online email service like Gmail or Yahoo. This capability is available on every cell phone and is designed specifically for occasional use by individuals, not companies, for the purposes of convenient messaging from a destop email application to a mobile user who has access to text messaging but not email from their wireless device. Copyright 2010 TextPower, Inc. Page 1 of 9 If I can send text messages using an SMTP (email) gateway for free why should I use and pay for SMS instead? While the idea of sending messages at no charge may be appealing on the surface it is rife with potential problems. 1. Using email-to-text for commercial purposes is in violation of carrier regulations. You can – and most likely WILL – be sued for it… and you will lose. Email-to-text is designed as a convenience for the occasional message and, according to AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, Sprint and virtually every other carrier, may not be used for commercial applications. Carriers can and do sue content providers (the people who are sending the messages) for using an “email-to-text” process. Every cellular carrier in the United States requires companies that send text messages through their networks to comply with the practices of the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) which says, in part: Carriers, at their discretion, make available SMTP gateways so that subscribers may receive SMS messages originated via email. Example: A mobile subscriber can be reached by sending an email (SMTP) message to [10 digit number]@[carrierdomainname].com. The carriers that support such gateways do so with the intent that they are not utilized for any commercial traffic. To that end, carriers actively monitor and filter against these connections to protect subscribers from unsolicited messages (spam) and utilize a variety of mechanisms to do so, including spam keyword filters, throttling against questionable domain or IP addresses suspected of abuse, and the like. The MMA guidelines are clear about not using SMTP to bypass the SMS process to send messages: Some application providers attempt to bind a SMTP/EMAIL and or SMS Modem to their application to bypass the messaging aggregator. This practice is not accepted by the mobile operators, commercial traffic is not allowed through either method. Summary: Using email-to-text instead of standard SMS carries legal, financial and business risks. Copyright 2010 TextPower, Inc. Page 2 of 9 2. Email-to-text messaging is unreliable – it could be stopped by the carrier at any time and the delivery is usually very slow. RELIABILITY: Carriers can, and will whenever they are aware of it, block email- to-text messages without notice because it is being sent in violation of their regulations for use of their network. In addition, email-to-text, just like any other email message, can be caught in a corporation’s email system’s spam filter because it is, in fact, email – it is just received by a phone but in every other way is traditional, common email. As a result, businesses who send messages using this method risk having their message flow shut down at any time without any prior notification. While this may be an acceptable risk for a bar or restaurant using messaging for promos or coupons it is likely to be unacceptable for an enterprise or business that requires reliability. DELIVERY SPEED: When companies send a text message their intention is generally for it to be delivered quickly, reliably and with some confirmation that it actually arrived. (If the company’s message wasn’t urgent or important they could send it by email or even post it on a web site and wait for people to read it periodically.) Text messages, almost by definition, are designed to demand immediate attention by being delivered directly to the end user’s mobile device. Sending messages via an email-to-text process defeats that purpose because of its inherent lack of speed. Delivery of text messages sent via SMTP is slow. These messages are subject to significant delay because they are subject to carrier firewalls, email servers, Internet delays and spam filters. In addition, due to the nature of email-to-text messages no error message or delivery confirmation is available and thus the sender has no way of knowing whether a problem exists or delays are keeping their messages from being delivered. The following graphic illustrates the difference between the two processes (the purple line at the top represents true SMS messages, the arrows along the horizontal plane represent the path of an email-to-text, or SMTP-generated message): Copyright 2010 TextPower, Inc. Page 3 of 9 SMS messages typically arrive at the mobile device within seconds of being sent by the content provider. Email-to-text messages do not. This is a particularly acute problem when sending bulk messages (which are also particularly prone to being noticed by carriers and thus blocked) because the throughput rate of email messages is significantly slower than SMS messages, roughly 15-50 messages per minute using email-to-text as compared to up to 3000/minute using SMS. Summary: Anyone concerned with reliability, avoiding spam filters, speed of delivery and a much greater chance of having their messages read quickly should not be using email-to-text/SMTP as their message delivery mechanism. Copyright 2010 TextPower, Inc. Page 4 of 9 3. Email-to-text messaging is one-way, thus severely limiting its capabilities. True SMS messaging allows for a variety of functions because it can handle replies that facilitate queries, voting, information retrieval, real-time updates, etc. Replies from mobile users to standard text messages can be set up to prompt actions, check inventories and do all other sorts of things because it functions in a highly standardized and structured environment. Replies from mobile users to email-to-text messages cannot do those same things because the reply function will send a message back to an email address and these replies are not nearly as structured as a short code on a text message system. Two-way, response-capable messaging is becoming increasingly important because in addition to the traditional uses for messaging a wave of event- triggered messaging functions and machine-to-machine functions have been developed and implemented. These capabilities are only available through a true SMS network because they require the ability to handle replies that command machines to take actions, respond to various keywords for different functions and many other capabilities that email messaging cannot handle. 4. Email-to-text messages are not identifiable. When a content provider sends a message through an SMTP gateway (i.e., via email) and it arrives on a user's mobile device the mobile user doesn’t know who the message is coming from, unlike a true SMS that they can identify. Essentially, true SMS provides a caller ID function which email-to-text cannot. Like any other form of email, email-to-text messages are subject to spam filters and blockers. Even if someone opts-in for what they believe is a text message service, if the alert is sent via the unapproved SMTP gateway method it's entirely possible that the mobile user’s corporate firewall, or the carrier's own spam filters, will block the message because the system recognizes it as email, not SMS (true SMS doesn’t route through any corporate firewall at all, completely eliminating the potential problem).